Nineteen Minutes Read online

  Lewis had been alone in the house, retrieving that message. He had dialed the number before he even realized what he was doing, and thus it was no surprise to find himself actually keeping the rescheduled appointment. He got out of the car, handed his keys to the gas station attendant. "You can wait right inside," the man said. "There's coffee."

  Lewis poured himself a cup, putting in three sugars and lots of milk, the way Peter would have fixed it. He sat down and instead of picking up a worn copy of Newsweek, he thumbed through PC Gamer.

  One, he thought. Two, three.

  On cue, the gas station attendant came into the waiting room. "Mr. Houghton," he said, "the car out there--it's not due for a state inspection until July."

  "I know."

  "But you . . . you made this appointment."

  Lewis nodded. "I don't have that particular car with me right now."

  It was impounded somewhere. Along with Peter's books and computer and journals and God only knew what else.

  The attendant stared at him, the way you do when you realize the conversation you're having has veered from the rational. "Sir," he said, "we can't inspect a car that's not here."

  "No," Lewis said. "Of course not." He put the magazine back down on the coffee table, smoothed its wrinkled cover. Then he rubbed a hand over his forehead. "It's just . . . my son made this appointment," he said. "I wanted to keep it on his behalf."

  The attendant nodded, slowly backing away. "Right . . . so, how about I just leave the car parked outside?"

  "Just so you know," Lewis said softly, "he would have passed inspection."

  *

  Once, when Peter was young, Lacy had sent him to the same sleepaway camp that Joey had gone to and adored. It was somewhere across the river in Vermont, and campers water-skied on Lake Fairlee and took sailing lessons and did overnight canoe trips. Peter had called the first night, begging to be brought home. Although Lacy had been ready to start the car and drive to get him, Lewis had talked her out of it. If he doesn't stick this out, Lewis had said, how will he ever know if he can?

  At the end of two weeks, when Lacy saw Peter again, there were changes in him. He was taller, and he'd put on weight. But there was also something different about his eyes--a light that had been burned to ash, somehow. When Peter looked at her, he seemed guarded, as if he understood that she was no longer an ally.

  Now he was looking at her the same way even as she smiled at him, pretending that there was no glare from the fluorescent light over his head; that she could reach out and touch him instead of staring at him from the other side of the red line that had been drawn on the jail floor. "Do you know what I found in the attic yesterday? That dinosaur you used to love, the one that roared when you pulled its tail. I used to think you'd be carrying it down the aisle at your wedding . . ." Lacy broke off, realizing that there might never be a wedding for Peter, or any aisle outside of a prison walkway, for that matter. "Well," she said, turning up the wattage on her smile. "I put it on your bed."

  Peter stared at her. "Okay."

  "I think my favorite birthday party of yours was the dinosaur one, when we buried those plastic bones in the sandbox and you had to dig for them," Lacy said. "Remember?"

  "I remember nobody showed up."

  "Of course they did--"

  "Five kids, maybe, whose moms had forced them to be there," Peter said. "God. I was six years old. Why are we even talking about this?"

  Because I don't know what else to say, Lacy thought. She looked around the visitation room--there were only a handful of inmates, and the devoted few who still believed in them, caught on opposite sides of that red stripe. In reality, Lacy realized, this dividing line between her and Peter had been there for years. If you kept your chin up, you might even be able to convince yourself there was nothing separating you. It was only when you tried to cross it, like now, that you understood how real a barrier it could be. "Peter," Lacy blurted out, "I'm sorry I didn't pick you up at sleepaway camp, that time."

  He looked at her as if she was crazy. "Um, thanks for that, but I got over it about a hundred years ago."

  "I know. But I can still be sorry." She was sorry about a thousand things, suddenly: that she didn't pay more attention when Peter showed her some new programming skill; that she hadn't bought him another dog after Dozer died; that they did not go back to the Caribbean last winter vacation, because Lacy had wrongly assumed they had all the time in the world.

  "Sorry doesn't change anything."

  "It does for the person who's apologizing."

  Peter groaned. "What the fuck is this? Chicken Soup for the Kid Without a Soul?"

  Lacy flinched. "You don't have to swear in order to--"

  "Fuck," Peter sang. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

  "I'm not going to sit here and take this--"

  "Yes you are," Peter said. "You know why? Because if you walk out on me, it's just one more thing you've got to be sorry about."

  Lacy was halfway out of her chair, but the truth in Peter's words weighted her back down into the seat. He knew her, it seemed, far better than she had ever known him.

  "Ma," he said softly, his voice edging over that red line. "I didn't mean that."

  She looked up at him, her throat thickening with tears. "I know, Peter."

  "I'm glad you come here." He swallowed. "I mean, you're the only one."

  "Your father--"

  Peter snorted. "I don't know what he's been telling you, but I haven't seen him since that first time he came."

  Lewis wasn't coming to see Peter? That was news to Lacy. Where did he go when he left the house, telling her that he was headed to the jail?

  She imagined Peter, sitting in his cell every other week, waiting for a visit that did not come. Lacy forced a smile--she would get upset on her own time, not Peter's--and immediately changed the topic. "For the arraignment . . . I brought you a nice jacket to wear."

  "Jordan says I don't need it. For the arraignment I just wear these clothes. I won't need the jacket until the trial." Peter smiled a little. "I hope you didn't cut the tags off yet."

  "I didn't buy it. It's Joey's interview blazer."

  Their eyes met. "Oh," Peter murmured. "So that's what you were doing in the attic."

  There was silence as they both remembered Joey coming downstairs in the Brooks Brothers blazer Lacy had gotten him at Filene's Basement in Boston at deep discount. It had been purchased for college interviews; Joey had been setting them up at the time of the accident.

  "Do you ever wish it was me who died," Peter asked, "instead of Joey?"

  Lacy's heart fell like a stone. "Of course not."

  "But then you'd still have Joey," Peter said. "And none of this would have happened."

  She thought of Janet Isinghoff, the woman who had not wanted her as a midwife. Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest--learning when it was better to lie, rather than hurt someone with the truth. It was why Lacy came to these visits with a smile stretched like a Halloween mask over her face, when in reality, she wanted to break down sobbing every time she saw Peter being led into the visitation room by a correctional officer. It was why she was talking about camp and stuffed animals--the hallmarks of the son she remembered--instead of discovering who he had become. But Peter had never learned how to say one thing when he meant another. It was one of the reasons he'd been hurt so many times.

  "It would be a happy ending," Peter said.

  Lacy drew in a breath. "Not if you weren't here."

  Peter looked at her for a long moment. "You're lying," he said--not angry, not accusing. Just as if he was stating the facts, in a way that she wasn't.

  "I am not--"

  "You can say it a million times, but that doesn't make it any more true." Peter smiled then, so guileless that Lacy felt it smart like a stripe from a whip. "You might be able to fool Dad, and the cops, and anyone else who'll listen," he said. "You just can't fool another liar."

  *

  By the time